


Death is not the end, sweet thing.

by Hawkbringer



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Awkwardly left in Japanese terminology, Bodily Fluids, Canon - Anime, Caring Sebastian, Child Death, Demon Magic, Demon Sebastian Michaelis, Except he's a dom now, Gondola, Imaginative depiction of Hell, Journey to Hell, Kiss of Death from Sebastian, Kissing, Lavish Bedclothes, Light BDSM, Literal Sleeping Together, Lore dump exposition, M/M, Master/Pet, Other, Peaceful Death, Possessive Sebastian Michaelis, Protectiveness, Role Reversal, Sebastian's Demonic Form, Supernatural Buildings, Supernatural Elements, Supernatural River, brief mention of suicidal thoughts, ignoring season two canon, picking up right where the first season ended, that should be a tag, the crow is Sebastians animal familiar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23266978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Sebastian concludes his contract with Ciel Phantomhive, the mortal. He consumes his soul, as requested. But he is not done with this fascinating little human yet. Sebastian chooses to keep him close, transporting him to Hell at great personal risk, to keep him as his companion, as his pet, still protective of the boy, but no longer obedient... (Anime season one canon only, written 2012)
Relationships: Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Comments: 3
Kudos: 139





	Death is not the end, sweet thing.

Sebastian moves slowly, and so Ciel is expecting the kiss. He closes his eyes because this is the end for him, and he wants to fade away. Ciel feels the press of his lips, at first, cool and frightening and gentle and welcome, and then his soul starts to burn as it rises from the viscera of his chest, or wherever it was physically - being dragged out from some other dimension, perhaps. It feels almost like he's trying to turn sideways in a way that doesn't exist. It feels like he's being pressed flat, like he's being dismembered and fed to wolves, like he's being burned in acid - any of a thousands different painful deaths - and then it doesn't. 

It doesn't feel like anything and Ciel opens his eyes.

Sebastian is still there, his face very close, but in a way that says it was even closer just moments ago. His eyes are demon-pink and glowing and the specific details of his clothing seem to shift at the corners of Ciel's eyes, like they can't quite remember what they're supposed to be anymore, and are just making it up moment to moment as they go along.

Ciel blinks at him without purpose and Sebastian's lips curve and part. Ciel has trouble remembering that that's called a smile.

"Bocchan," he says reverently, quietly, against his temple, brushing his lips against his hair. Then he can't seem to help himself and he presses them to Ciel's head, his hand coming up and holding Ciel's head closer. The rest of his intact arm is slung around the boy's shoulders, Ciel feels that as his arm shifts to pull him closer. There's another hand at his back and Ciel startles, sits up momentarily and Sebastian smiles and reassures him, "No injury is permanent for a demon, bocchan. As you will come to know." 

Ciel replies with a simple, "Ah," and lets that go for now. Mostly because he can't think of anything wrong with that statement.

Sebastian is pressing kisses all over Ciel's cheek and chin and Ciel is vaguely aware that that shouldn't be happening, but he feels only a lassitude that makes him very disinclined to care about /anything,/ even whether or not he is dead. 

His butler's arms are soft around him and his body is warmer than the stone bench, so Ciel snuggles in towards him like a little child towards its mother and tucks his head beneath his butler's chin. 

Sebastian's smile is almost disgustingly sappy as he regards his small charge, who has fallen back asleep into a post-coital slumber that only the truly well-fucked can know. 

Standing, for his job here is done, Sebastian looks to the scruffy bird that hasn't taken its eye from them the entire time and produces one short whistle. The bird takes off from its perch and flits away into the forest. Sebastian knows it will settle on the boat they took to get here - the same one they'll use to leave.

He leaps across the isle to the sandy beach Ciel has not actually set foot on, and places his little charge carefully upon the boat they've only left vacant for an hour, glances over to ensure that the dark bird is perched on the forward end of the dingy, picks up the pole and pushes off from the sandy shore, the tide lapping up onto the beach, covering Sebastian's footprints, as they go.

That bird will act a sentry on their journey from this half-way point to Hell. It will protect them, with its malevolent gaze, from any other demons who may, who /will,/ rather, wish to steal away Sebastian's delicious prize. Ciel's /soul/ has been eaten, fully and truly devoured, but there are yet other ways to savor this most uniquely tarnished being.

Silently they sail for a while, through seas that all look the same. Ciel wakes once when the raven calls out, but after questioning Sebastian about it, and only partially taking in the idea of the hell-bird, a familiar or something, as the guard dog of the boat, he easily falls back asleep. 

He stays asleep for a very long while - not as long as it took to get from Tower Bridge to the island, but still, what would be, for a human, a very long time.

******

When he wakes again, he finds himself in extremely unfamiliar waters, literally. Not figuratively. Literally, most everything is the same. The boat is still there, as is Sebastian and the guard-raven, but the featureless, flat ocean from before is gone. Or more accurately, it has been channeled into a suspiciously-slowly-moving river with unfamiliar buildings of dark and red stone rising from the mist around them. The river, the buildings, even the air itself practically oozes unfriendliness. As opposed to the ocean that sounded like swishing, soothing nothingness, the background noises here are malevolent, faint and ebbing, swirling like the equally-unfriendly mists. Ciel briefly hopes that this is all a bad dream, but then he remembers.

He looks up and sees Sebastian, but not Sebastian as he's ever looked before. 

His chaperone is concentrating, that much is clear, from the jagged-toothed half-snarl on his face to the clawed hands clutching the gondola's pole and digging chips into the wood. 

He does not see that Ciel has woken and Ciel himself wishes he had not. 

/That's his demon form, it must be,/ Ciel realizes despite the shivers of fear and paralyzing panic that start to numb his brain. He glances once at the guard-raven, whose form is unchanged, except for the eyes, which glow a poisonous pink. Then he focuses on Sebastian, trying very hard to reconcile his butler's straight-laced, gentle masculinity with this half-animal, half-human form. 

He's no determinable gender, and that's the first thing that starts to make Ciel's head pound. His claws were to be expected, and the feathers on his arms. The body encased in sleekness and shiny leather is human in its stature, cylindrical as it was before, and balanced on two legs. The feet are poured into what look like impossibly-high heels, until Ciel realizes that his butler's thighs have shortened, and his feet grown impossibly long, each toe spread out like a tiger's to grip the earth - or at least the wood of the gondola, which sails on placidly, unaware of the psychological tension of the beings it bears. 

But the biggest feature that Ciel cannot fathom is the black, restless wings. They aren't built like the angel's long and pointed white ones - they look more like bat's wings, several 'fingers' reaching down from a point on the demon's upper back, which move almost independently of each other, but are joined by the feather-covered skin. Yes, the more Ciel looks at them, the more they look like a pair of long-fingered hands. They'd probably hurt like hell to rip, he thinks, fairly certain that was one of the tortures Sebastian inflicted upon the angel before its final scream. 

The shape carrying those creepy bat-like wings is shifting as its arms flex and drag the guiding pole. His...her...its...size changes, lean then thick, muscled then obese. The way the changes flow into one another, so that the night-black outline seems to ooze... it sickens Ciel somewhat. He wishes Sebastian would simply make up his mind about his appearance! Such inconsistency is unbecoming of a servant. 

Huffing to himself in his head and mentally cataloging the many imperfections and annoyances of his butler's new form, Ciel becomes aware of the buildings in the mist. Only through the corners of his eyes does he see, but he does see. They change, too. They lean, they creak, they huddle in a purposefully malevolent way as if to warn passers-by that none are welcome to take shelter beneath their eaves. Ciel half-expects rain to drip from every window, black in the permanent half-light...or perhaps blood.

Shivering at the thought, Ciel lets his eye be drawn, though both are uncovered now, to the only building in the near vicinity that appears un-malevolent. It shines even, almost beckoningly, and as the facade of a building shimmers and fades as they approach, the boat's guard raven lets out one defiant screech and flaps from its perch, settling atop a gate of simple wood that curves above their heads. Sebastian has to duck under it as the boat glides beneath it. 

The space the building-image left vacant is undeterminable, in the mist, but Ciel gets an estimation of its size when the guard-raven ruffles its feathers and shuffles on its perch, a motion that immediately produces a ring of poison-pink light, which expands from the raven's feet and encircles, encapsulates, rather, a wide area not quite the size of the mansion's lobby. 

But what is this place, exactly? Is it Sebastian's? Is it the raven's? It's still as heavily misty as the main thoroughfare outside, and all Ciel can see is a pier that the boat glides up to and then pauses beside. 

The river, of course, doesn't pause. It wouldn't think of being tamed by that raven's watching-spell, which it simply snakes into and then snakes out of again, like it can't stay, has other places to be. Ciel wonders if Satan himself isn't quite interesting enough for that river, wonders where it goes. Everywhere, is probably the answer, and in any case, it's clear he's not going to learn that now, because Sebastian's voice comes from behind him and it's one big relieved sigh.

"Ahhhh... we've made it." It doesn't sound like he's talking to Ciel. 

"And this is where, exactly?" 

"Oh! Bocchan! You're awake! Forgive me, young master, I didn't notice--"

Ciel smiles faintly ruefully as he twists to look at his companion. "I figured," he drawls. "Otherwise you wouldn't have looked..." He waves a hand at Sebastian, who is looking exactly as usual now, not a feather -- er, hair, out of place. "...well, like you did." 

Sebastian tilts his head, an adoring, questioning expression on his face and Ciel snorts faintly. "You had..ah..feathers. And...claws?" 

Sebastian's eyes widen and he puts one hand to his mouth. "You...saw feathers?" he asks, as if he's afraid to hear the answer.

Ciel nods, matter of fact. "Yeah. I figured that's what you look like as a demon, when you're not...pretending for me." He looks away, then back up to his butler. "The wings were the most...hm, unsightly, for a butler. I'm certain the claws would have come in handy, though. For chopping the food or something..." 

Sebastian turns his face away slightly, a faintly-embarrassed set to his full mouth. "No, dear master, that would have been quite unsanitary... Not to mention it would have scared the servants..."

Ciel scoffs again and looks out at the totally-unremarkable area enclosed by the raven's pink protection spell. "I don't know...Mey-Rin would have likely found some sort of twisted pleasure in it..." 

"Hmm," Sebastian agrees, stepping down from the boat and tying it off on the low river-side pier that probably all the buildings here posses, behind their facades. /Perhaps there aren't proper streets?/ Ciel wonders. "Grell-san certainly would have. I shall be most vigilant that he does not get the chance."

"Would a shinigami come and get us down here?" Ciel doesn't think that would be possible. Shinigami aren't allowed into Heaven, either, from what he can tell. 

"Out here, more precisely. We are far from the human world, but hardly underground, dear bocchan. And he could not. None of them could, lest I brought them, as I did you, with particular intent and no little effort expended to keep you safe." He reaches out as if he means to stroke Ciel's cheek, but thinks better of it in mid-reach and drops his hand to Ciel's wrist instead. "Come, bocchan, let's get you inside." 

Ciel stands slowly in the wobbling boat and Sebastian reaches down with his other hand and sweeps Ciel into his arms, leaping through the air across the width of the pier, then again to the door of a small hovel. There's no grass, no lawn to speak of, that Ciel can see.

He tries to protest. "You--" can't really live /here/! he was about to say - before being swept in through the doorway, which slams closed behind them, and deposited with utmost care onto the beautifully-made, but small, single bed in the single room. 

Ciel looks about him, mouth slightly open and lost for words, before Sebastian gives a thoughtful hum and snaps his fingers. The bed, and the whole wall it was placed against, expands instantly into a passable imitation of his bed and window-seat in the mansion...as it was before the fire, at least. Before the second fire, he reminds himself, then shakes his head to dismiss the thought. 

"Is it not to your liking, bocchan? I admit, the particular details of the decor are not what they..."

"That's not it," Ciel interrupts him with a raised hand. He smiles slightly in reassurance. "The bed is fine. The view..." Sebastian snaps his fingers again and smaller version of his bedroom window appears in the wall. Beyond it, a forest and the smiling crescent moon, and Ciel gasps involuntarily. 

"The illusion will change as the days pass. However, there is no sun here, only moon." 

Ciel's face falls and he hikes himself up towards the large pillows by the headboard. "This is Hell, isn't it?" he asks rhetorically. "Where else could it be?" he scoffs almost to himself, but his butler hears.

"It is," he admits, and watches Ciel's face for his reaction. "It is your new home, after all, bocchan."

Ciel straightens at his title, one that he might have to convince Sebastian to drop. "But why, Sebastian? I thought... I thought after I let you take me that I'd have some peace..." He drops his head into his hands. "I was done with living. I was so ready to be done. To just be nothing...To have it all go away and /forget/..."

Sebastian tilts his head and questions, "You thought you would cease to exist without your soul?"

"Yes!" Ciel pleads, not taking his head from his hands. "Why didn't I? I shouldn't be here, Sebastian! I should be--"

"Dead?" His butler lifts one eyebrow. "Oh, but you are, bocchan. Well and truly dead. This is the hereafter. The life you lived on Earth was but a taste of the true afterlife, and there are thousands of years of that before you." He lifts Ciel's head with one finger beneath his chin. "Wishing that you had believed in God now?"

"Tch! Of course not," Ciel turns brusquely away from his butler's patronizing finger. "After all I've seen, after all that angel did.... I don't think I'd want to be in Heaven right now." He drops his gaze, though, and adds, "Even if I could see my parents." 

Sebastian says nothing. 

But then Ciel raises his head. "No, it wouldn't be worth it. I've made my peace with them. I loved them, but they... died. It wouldn't make any sense to spend eternity with them. They probably wouldn't have liked what I've done with what little time I had anyway." Ciel wrapped his arms around his knees, remembering his parents' screams as his hatred for their murderers had wiped out any chance he'd had of cleansing redemption. 

"Their innocent little boy died when they did - except for some reason he had to stay behind and live through Hell on Earth--" Ciel's gaze suddenly flies to Sebastian. "This Hell isn't going to be like that, is it? I'm done now. I'm done suffering." It sounds like a proclamation, but there's just a hint of worry behind it. It seems the little lord is coming to realize that not everything he believes is based on truth. 

Sebastian smiles and places his hand against his master's cheek - gently, without any ulterior motive, but it makes Ciel's stomach drop all the same. "No. For you, Hell will not be suffering. Not in the way you mean. More precisely, it will not be humiliating. It could be boring, which might inflict its own brand of suffering upon you, but you will not be tortured at the hands of any denizens of Hell. You are my pet now," Sebastian continues, sliding a caressing hand across his ear and down his neck. "I will let no harm befall you."

Ciel smacks his hand away, eyes instantly ablaze. "'Pet'!?" he spits, frightened by the implications of that word. "You don't mean 'prisoner'?"

"Oh no, bocchan. You shall have freedom of movement if I desire it - and if you behave well. I was never a prisoner as your butler, was I? ...Ah, but neither was I your pet." He places a finger against Ciel's lips again and the boy is too incensed to protest it. "You treated me like a servant - rather like a convenience, I should say. Never quite able to stop taking me for granted." He smiles sweetly in contrast to his cutting words. "Until I left you." Ciel's eyes harden instantaneously and Sebastian simply continues, "It was an important lesson for you, bocchan. You are not to take me for granted anymore. It could be dangerous to your health." 

Ciel looks down, admitting how close he came to death in the Queen's palace before his butler decided to intervene. Then he looks up, pointing out, "I can't die again, can I? Is it even possible for me to put my life in danger anymore?"

"Oh, yes," Sebastian tells him, watching with perhaps an unseemly amount of pleasure as bocchan's face falls. "You cannot die, true, but you can get sick. And, like humans, some of our...ailments, are incurable. Eternity in ill health is far worse than simply dying of it."

Ciel scoffs. "Isn't it the same thing?"

Sebastian looks affronted. "Indeed not, bocchan. Eternity in ill health verses a few years at most? It is simply a question of quantity." Ciel concedes the point by rolling his eyes.

"But of course I do not wish such suffering to befall you, my pet. I will take care of you, give you what I can, and I shall try to ensure that you are not bored. The purpose of keeping a pet is to amuse and enhance the health of the master. The pet in return is given an easy life, protected from its natural enemies, fed sufficiently, and entertained by its owner. As humans who own cats tend to learn, it is often difficult to tell who is the owner, and who the pet. You will demand, and receive, basic sustenance from me, and I shall restrict your freedom of movement to prevent predators from laying their hands on you - and we shall both be happier and healthier for the arrangement." 

He seems so certain of himself, Ciel thinks, watching him smile. "And if the pet escapes?"

"Then the owner will find him. He will bring him home and tend his wounds and perhaps restrict his movements even further to ensure he does not escape again." Sebastian's eyes flash for just a moment. "Perhaps add a collar of some type...." Ciel glowers and Sebastian chuckles brightly. 

"Oh, bocchan. You do not yet know what terrors Hell can spew forth. In time you will come to be grateful for this arrangement. Oh, and bocchan?" Ciel looks up at him as he smiles with practically a twinkle in his damned eyes. "The more of my commands you can bring yourself to follow, the more rewards you will receive. Remember that."

Ciel simply scrunches his nose up briefly, snorting in displeasure, not looking at his former servant. Thinking about it for a minute, his arms fall slack around his knees and he folds them down, just sitting on the bed as he says, "I suppose that's rather fair, isn't it? I got to order you around in my lifetime, and now you can order me around in yours." He raises his face fully to his butler for the first time since awakening dead and Sebastian feels an inexplicable pain in his chest at the realization that the sigil is gone from his right eye. Two completely normal blue, innocent, but time-hardened eyes gaze up at him as Ciel points out, "It seems you got the better bargain, in the end."

Sebastian's small smile was perfectly expected. "Of course, bocchan. I am, after all, simply one hell... of a demon." 

The boy tried to give his usual irritated scoff and roll of his eyes, but he found himself only getting half-way with either. He rubbed his eyes distractedly and Sebastian's face softened and he reached up to turn down the covers for his young lord. Ciel drowsily crawled toward the imposing mountain of pillows and almost slid his legs under the covers before Sebastian remembered, "Oh! Bocchan, I must dress you for bed first!" 

"Huh?" Ciel replied fuzzily, then he started fussing with the buttons of his coat. "Oh, yes..."

"There is no need for that, bocchan," Sebastian told him fondly, snapping his fingers and instantly transforming both their clothing into acceptable, and very luxurious, sleepwear. 

Wiggling his toes to ensure their shoelessness, Ciel stuffed his feet under the covers and the rest of him followed soon after. 

"I will sleep beside you, bocchan, for your protection, and as there is only one bed. If you do not wish to accidentally touch me during your rest, I would suggest that you move towards the far side of the bed." 

As he spoke, he lifted the nearest corner of the many layers of sheets and blankets and slid his own body beneath the covers, leaving a respectful distance between himself and his new pet, which Ciel could increase if he desired.

"Tch!" the boy managed to spit back in answer, and simply tugged the covers further over his head, curled up facing away from the room and the butler, trying not to glare at the distracting moon for daring to produce light. 

Sebastian raised one finger and the curtain ties undid themselves, shrouding the moon from view and plunging the room into immediate, but not complete, darkness. Ciel humpfed approvingly and before he dropped off to sleep he asked one last question of his butler-turned-pet-owner. "Why am I still so sleepy? I thought demons didn't sleep." That was two questions, so Sebastian only deigned to answer the first.

"Your mind has yet to adapt to the idea that this new existence is not just a bad dream. You will be tired often, for a while, until your psyche adjusts." He slid a hand across his bocchan's shoulder, unable to resist squeezing it, and the soft fabrics covering it, in reassurance. /And I will be with you, young master, until the very end./ Ciel was fully asleep now, and did not feel the touch. 

Sebastian had never specified what end he would stay until, so it had never been a lie, even when he himself wasn't sure which 'end' he had meant.

His master now comfortably bundled up in his blankets, Sebastian took the time to snuggle luxuriously into one of the sumptuous pillows that his master had enjoyed every night, that /he/ never got to indulge in to his heart's content. Being out among humans for so long had given the demon a wealth of new ideas for pleasuring the senses and indulging in sin. Rubbing his face against the silken, cool pillow (demons have very low body heat expenditure, so their pillows would stay cool all night - were they to sleep with any regularity), Sebastian pondered that sleeping night after night upon such sinfully-pleasurable fabrics had to be a sin in someone's book, somewhere. Satisfied with that thought, that he was committing so many sins while enjoying himself immensely (/that oughta piss off the bastards Up There/), Sebastian closed his eyes and indulged in a Gluttony of Sloth.

**Author's Note:**

> Ciel is thus dead, and not transformed into a demon - no longer mortal, no longer in possession of a soul. What happens next is up to them, they are both freer than they've ever been. 
> 
> Written January 25th 2013 or before, and barely edited. //'s indicate italics.


End file.
